January is an excellent time to go away as a Church. Not much is going on, there’s not much to do, and the weather’s horrible, which means a lot of sitting inside.
And this does something to starve the soul, making it lean and hungry and vulnerable.
Walking through the Surrey countryside was gentle and beautiful. I loved playing board games with new friends, and laughing with them as we got things wrong together. Those of us who spent time outside early in the morning will have been entranced by the quiet dawn frost. And more than a few enjoyed risking their ankles in a definitely non-regulation game of football.
But these warm and welcome loves are not the reasons for going away as Church. Instead, they are the preconditions to an honest worship in which our souls are nourished.
Felix Aremo, our guest speaker and part of the London City Mission team, spent the weekend covering the three dimensions of Church life :
- Upward – us in right reverence of God
- Outward – us as priests to our city and neighbours
- Inward – us seeking discomforting unity through diversity
Between sessions 1 and 2, Jonty also shared with us the Globe visions and values.
1. Upward: Isaiah 6
“Do you know what it’s like to be forgiven? And if you do, are you still amazed by it?”
Felix began the weekend with Isaiah 6 to remind us of the true place of God, in whom thunderous power and tender mercy combine. Isaiah has it right when he thinks he’s going to die in God’s presence (‘“woe is me!”’). He desperately wants to join in with the seraphim praising God but “my lips are sinful”. And yet God, rather than demanding greater righteousness, has a seraph touch a coal to his lips to make him clean.
This tremendous forgiveness leads to an outburst of desire from Isaiah to be sent by God to prophesy to the people. His gift of holiness leads Isaiah – and us – to outward mission.
2. The Globe Church Vision & Values
One hour – and a lot of cake – later, Jonty shared with us what this mission looks like, by taking us through the Globe Church visions and values. I’ve been at Globe since September, but despite seeing the huge values banners at church each week, they still felt like someone else’s aims, and so I was challenged freshly by each one.
The Vision – That we would be…
- …all sorts of people as a Church. This was particularly challenging for me.
- …following Jesus in London. This is His Church. We give up control of our lives to follow him.
- …sent on the greatest mission. While Globe has a strong vision of being a church that sends out, we also want to embrace responsibility for where we are.
The Values
- Dependent – ‘we want to learn to pray’
- Relational – we want to encourage small groups in a big city
- Discipling – we want to have a varied and broad sense of supporting others to flourish
- Missional – “go next door”
- Generous – “generosity always hurts”
3. Outward: 1 Peter 2
“I wonder, if we remember who we are as Church, how many people across London would join us into battle against sin and Satan?”
After lunch, a walk, a (really good) nap, and dinner, we were back with Felix, who shared Peter’s encouragement to new Christians to know who they are in Christ. They and we are a ‘royal priesthood’, a ‘chosen nation’, a ‘chosen race’, ‘God’s own people’.
Peter’s reminder of our identity is an encouragement and also a responsibility. Should we forget this identity as a Church, the future of London is bleak. Friends, colleagues, and the strangers we sit next to on the bus deeply need priests of the Lord to minister to them. They don’t need niceness but a sacrificial and enduring love that is costly to us and honouring of the God whose true power is revealed in Isaiah 6.
4. Inward: Psalm 133
‘[Unity] is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes’
Over the Sunday morning smell of coffee and late-night exhaustion, Felix unpicked an odd (and literally sticky) Psalm to give a largely white, largely professional Church congregation a potent warning: that a Church lacking unity of background, race, class, and profession will find its holiness diminished.
In other words, a united Church is a diverse Church that thrives in the discomfort of many different communities seeking common worship in Christ. Census data suggests that of the population in a 1km radius circle around Globe, almost half of were born outside the UK; 23% are Black and 15% are Asian; 12% are Muslim; and only three-quarters say that English is their main language. Is this diversity reflected in who I spend my time with, or who I seek to worship with? Absolutely not.
It was easier, as we embarked on the bus to return home, to remember the walks, the games, and the laughter of the weekend than this difficult truth. The Bible describes unity as being the necessary anointing oil of Exodus 30 that made the priesthood holy. It is something I have often gone without.
But in this sparse and dark season of the year, these difficult convictions came as a rich and complex feast. I couldn’t stop mulling them over as we returned to London, and the more I did so, the more it filled the soul with a restless direction toward God, neighbour, and brother and sister.